Forget about the legal arguments regarding President Obama's executive actions on immigration for a moment. Two major police chief groups and 27 individual chiefs and sheriffs think the president's actions are going to make us safer, reports
Bob Ortega of the Arizona Republic.
The law-enforcement officers, in their brief, said that the executive action "will improve public safety by encouraging community cooperation with police." They also said that offering undocumented immigrants the opportunity to have verified, secure identification "aids law enforcement in carrying out its day to day duties."
Those signing the amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief include the police chiefs of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia and Denver, and the sheriffs of Dallas County and El Paso County in Texas, among others.
The associations that signed on to the brief are the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents chiefs of the 66 largest municipalities in the country, and the Police Executive Research Forum, which studies policing practices.
The federal lawsuit, originally brought by Texas and 16 other states, will challenge the president's constitutional authority to provide deportation relief to up to five million undocumented immigrants. Arguments are set to be heard on Thursday, Jan. 15.
As The Arizona Republic has reported, the Texas-led suit faces several high legal hurdles. More than 100 legal and constitutional scholars sent a letter to Obama, before his action, stating that deferring the deportations even of millions of undocumented immigrants falls squarely within the executive branch's legal authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion, and follows similar, smaller actions taken by other presidents.